Kebra Nagast: The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek is the work has been held in peculiar honour in Abyssinia for several centuries, and throughout that country it has been, and still is, venerated by the people as containing the final proof of their descent from the Hebrew Patriarchs, and of the kinship of their kings of the Solomonic line with Christ, the Son of God. The importance of the book, both for the kings and the people of Abyssinia, is clearly shown by the letter that King John of Ethiopia wrote to the late Lord Granville in August, 1872. The king says: "There is a book called 'Kivera Negust' which contains the Law of the whole of Ethiopia, and the names of the Shûms [i.e. Chiefs], and Churches, and Provinces are in this book. I pray you find out who has got this book, and send it to me, for in my country my people will not obey my orders without it." (See infra, p. xxvii.) The first summary of the contents of the Kebra Nagast was published by Bruce as far back as 1813, but little interest was roused by his somewhat bald précis. And, in spite of the labours of Prætorius, Bezold, and Hugues le Roux, the contents of the work are still practically unknown to the general reader in England. It is hoped that the translation given in the following pages will be of use to those who have not the time or opportunity for perusing the Ethiopic original.

Kebra Nagast is a great storehouse of legends and traditions, some historical and some of a purely folklore character, derived from the Old Testament and the later Rabbinic writings, and from Egyptian (both pagan and Christian), Arabian, and Ethiopian sources. Of the early history of the compilation and its maker, and of its subsequent editors we know nothing, but the principal groundwork of its earliest form was the traditions that were current in Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt during the first four centuries of the Christian era. Weighing carefully all that has been written by Dillmann, Trump, Zotenberg, Wright, and Bezold, and taking into account the probabilities of the matter, it seems to me that we shall not be far wrong if we assign the composition of the earliest form of the Kebra Nagast to the sixth century A.D. Its compiler was probably a Coptic priest, for the books he used were writings that were accepted by the Coptic Church. Whether he lived in Egypt, or in Aksûm, or in some other part of Ethiopia matters little, but the colophons of the extant Ethiopic MSS of the Kebra Nagast suggest that he wrote in Coptic.

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